


Overtures

by Lierdumoa



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Spoilers through 4x06, possibly too much monologuing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-07 02:18:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17951777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lierdumoa/pseuds/Lierdumoa
Summary: The monster discovers that pills & tequila aren't the only things its new body likes.Note: I do plan to get this story beta'd by the time I post the final chapter, but for now, you're getting the raw, unwashed version.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia double bluffs. Quentin fails to drink a glass of water.

 

~•♢•~

 

It’s been less than a day since the monster had its drunken near-overdose in Eliot's body.

Julia’s out grabbing a book she left somewhere, that she thinks might be useful when it pops up behind Quentin as he’s pouring himself a glass of water.

“I’m bored.”

Quentin puts his glass down and turns to face the monster, every muscle in his body gone tense. “How terrible for you."

The monster considers him for a moment, an indulgent expression on its stolen face.

“Really, Quentin,” the monster sighs. “You’re not still pouting about the pill … things. Are you? there’s no reason to be upset with me. I was only giving the body what it wanted. This body likes things that are bad for it.”

“Yeah, well—”

“And you.”

Quentin’s mouth snaps shut, too startled to remember how he’d planned on finishing that sentence.

“It likes things that are bad for it,” the monster continues, “… and it very much likes _you_.” The monster pops suddenly from across the room, directly into Quentin’s very personal space, bending to speak directly into Quentin’s ear, just a hairsbreadth from physical contact.

“This body, it likes … how you smell.” The monster pauses a moment, breathing in deeply through Eliot’s nose, then leans back to drag its eyes over Quentin’s face. “And it’s little heart beats faster when it sees your mouth.”

The monster reaches up with Eliot’s hand and only just brushes the tip of one index finger across the tops of the hairs on Quentin’s forearm, light as a shiver.

“And it gets this … tin-gl-y feeling in the odd…dest places when it’s skin touches your skin.”

Quentin looks up into the monster's eyes as they stare unblinkingly at him behind Eliot's eyelashes. He curls his fingers around Eliot's wrist and gently pushes the arm down and away. “You're not. You don't want this. You _can't_.”

“Oh, I can. I can want _lots_ of things.”

It reaches out again, this time with unambiguous intent, curling its fingers over the waistband of Quentin's pants and yanking him forward until they're pressed together, one long line of contact from pelvis to rib cage. Quentin can't help but note that Eliot's body seems very interested in the current proceedings and—oh. Quentin's body isn't exactly impartial either. He's gone half mast at some point in the past two minutes.

That's … distressing.

Time to try another tactic. He hasn't exactly been loving getting tossed around like a hacky sack, but anything's got to be better than the monster using Eliot's body like _this_. He swallows down his panic, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Is Eliot doing something to you in there? Is Eliot making you feel like this?”

He braces himself for an explosion.

“Making me?” The monster's face twists into an enraged grimace. “You think your pathetic little friend could make—”

“If he's not making you, are you. You. You _want_ to feel the things he feels? You ... want to be like more like him?”

The monster's eyes narrow, dangerously. Quentin does his best to brace himself for what's sure to be another round of 'which bone do I crack next' but when the attack comes, it's of a different nature. The monster clenches a fist in Quentin's shirt and shoves forward one step, two, three. Quentin's stumbles backwards on tip-toe until his back slams up against a wall.

“I want my body back,” it growls, glaring rancorously at him. “And while I am making allowances for your many inadequacies and waiting very patiently for you to get me my body back,” it continues, slowly pressing in to grind its erection up into the warm space between Quentin's thighs, “I will sssatisfy myself with having _this_ body, and having the things that this body wants.”

Quentin, floating outside himself with the unreality of it all, hears a broken whimper slip from his throat. An unbidden thought escapes, mewling and weak, that he   _missed_ having Eliot's body against him like this, having these hands on him like this, having that delicious grind, just teetering on the edge of pain in his too tight jeans.

The monster curls a hand around Quentin's throat, not quite hard enough to bruise, and Quentin can't help the confused tremor of terror and arousal that sweeps through him. The monster keeps him pinned, and there's a strange, almost human look behind the eyes. Behind Eliot's eyes.

It starts to lean in for a kiss, lips just beginning to part. It would be so _easy_ , Quentin thinks, traitorously, to get swept up in it. To shut his eyes and pretend. To just let himself forget and let the distance narrow between their mouths. Eliot hasn't touched him like this in so _long_.

But Eliot's not touching him like this now. It's a monster wearing Eliot as a meat suit. Feeding off Eliot's lusts. “Please,” Quentin whispers, already tasting the tequila on the monster's breath.

“Please don't.”

Something almost like a flinch twitches across the monster's borrowed face. For a moment, the monster looks hesitant—almost … concerned?

And then, even more suddenly and unexpectedly than it began, it's over. The monster steps back with a shove. “I have to go away now. Because of—reasons. Don't try to be … clever while I'm gone.”

It vanishes.

Quentin breathes out a long, reedy breath and lets himself sink to the floor.

 

 ~•♧•~

 

Charlton’s wound hasn’t gotten worse, but it hasn’t gotten better either. Eliot’s a little worried it’s going to turn septic. What would that even mean if a wound turns septic in this place?

He offers to mentally transport Charlton to his memory of the Brakebills infirmary to gather some medical supplies, but then Charlton points out that Eliot might damage to himself if he tries using what probably amount to bits of his own soul to heal Charlton’s, and Eliot decides to save that idea for if Charlton’s injury starts worsening.

“I got injured too. My nose was bleeding when I came back through the door. It’s not anymore. Why am I’m healing if you’re not?”

“Because we’re in _your_ happy place.”

“So let’s go to yours then.”

“We _can’t_. He poisoned it. He. He saw a glimpse of it, the last time I used my door to try to get out. Enough to know how to destroy it. Now I can’t think of it without—“” Charlton shudders, “—without remembering what he did.”

Eliot yanks Charlton up off the couch where he’s convalescing and shakes him.

“Caught a glimpse of it?” Eliot growls. “Going through the door means it can find this place? You didn’t think you should have mentioned that _before_?”

“You didn’t listen to any of the other warnings I gave you,” Charlton says, looking at Eliot like he’s a madman who can’t be reasoned with. Eliot glares for a moment longer, then releases him. Charlton eases back onto the couch, wincing.

Eliot closes his eyes and presses his palms into his eyelids for good measure. No point getting angry. Anger won’t help anything.

Fuck, he misses Q.

“The monster won’t do anything anyway,” Charlton adds. “Not while he’s still in your body.”

Eliot starts to ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean when a wave of dizziness wash over him, and suddenly he feels … heavier, along with a strange fuzziness, like the whole outer layer of him is half numb, muffled under felt.

His body is pressed against another, oddly familiar body.

Quentin against him, pressed along his front.

the unforgiving stretch of denim against his crotch as it grinds up into the cradle of Quentin’s of pelvis. He feels Quentin’s breath ragged against his mouth, the twitch of Quentin’s carotid fast under his fingers, the smell of him so heady Eliot could swoon with it.

Quentin’s eyes are hooded, soft. His lips move, and it takes a moment for Eliot to register that he’s spoken, voice pleading.

“Please don’t.”

Eliot feels something like a flinch, then a terrible pressure squeezing in on his consciousness like a vise, and then he’s back in the mental construct of the cottage. He realizes Charlton is standing in front of him, hands on his shoulders, repeating his name.

“—liot. Eliot. Eliot!”

He focuses in on Charlton’s distressed expression and blinks.

“Did I just … go somewhere?”

Charlton shakes his head. “You stopped moving. The lights were flickering.”

“Oh.”

“Your nose is bleeding again.” 

 

~•♤•~ 

 

Julia finds Quentin where the monster left him — slumped against the wall, staring off into the middle distance. He looks over at her when he hears her come in, then clamors to his feet, moving gingerly, careful of the bruising ache from where the monster threw him against the wall the night prior. “We have a new problem.”

“He was here again? He hurt you. He—what did he want.”

“He wanted … several things. New and … unexpected things.”

Julia starts to look overly concerned. Quentin realizes he sounds more than a little … off at the moment.

“Quentin,” she says, laying a gentle palm on his shoulder, “you have to try to play nice with this thing, at least for now. Antagonizing the monster won't get Eliot back faster.”

“I wasn't _trying_ to ant—”

“I left you alone for less than an hour! Did you or did you not just get thrown into another wall?”

“Not! Not … exactly. Well. I guess in a manner of—Julia it just tried to have sex with me.”

That's enough to short out Julia's thought process for several seconds. Her face goes bank at first, and then her eyes widen in dismay. “Are you okay?”

“No, not like, I mean yes! I'm okay. It stopped before anything really happened. There was some, like, light petting. And it was like, sniffing me?” Quentin can feel himself flushing a deep red. “And it said that I made it feel, uhm. Tingly. I. I think it's not just Eliot's addictions that are … leaking. I think it's starting to feel, like, emotions.”

“Because it … wanted to have sex with you?”

“It could easily have uh, forced the issue, so to speak. But it stopped. It stopped because I _asked_ it to. And it got this look like. Like it felt. Bad? You know all this weird behavior started after Eliot broke through in the park.”

She pauses for a moment, then looks sideways at Quentin. “And you're completely sure that was Eliot?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Like, completely, completely sure.”

“I’m not going over this with you again.”

“Again? We didn’t go over this. You just told me Eliot was alive and expected me to take your word for it. Quentin, I think you need to consider the possibility that you're not thinking clearly about this.”

Quentin gives her a mutinous look, mouth opening to protest.

“Let—” Julia holds up her hands in a stalling gesture. “—me finish. I. I know how—I know there’s been something you’re not telling me about you and Eliot. And I know,” Julia pushes onward, “that I stopped being your first choice for a confidant a long time ago. But I could see the way you looked at him. The way you _always_ looked at him. I’m know what you’re like when you—”

“Don’t.”

Julia raises her hands again, this time to placate. “I just want you to be sure that you’re not seeing what you want to see.”

Quentin’s throws her a frustrated look, then heads over to the couch to sit. Julia follows, and Quentin grudgingly shifts over a bit to let her join, turning his face away, unable to stomach the scrutiny. “Look it’s not like I don’t know how I sound, but I _know_ Eliot, Julia. I know Eliot better than I know _you_.”

Julia blinks. “Uh. Hurtful,” she says in an exaggerated offended tone, then giving him a playful shove, careful not to aggravate his bruises.

Quentin gives her a wry smile. “That wasn’t a dig at you. I literally know him better. It's. There was a quest. We went back in time, in Fillory, to the mosaic.  For the third key.”

Julia frowns pensively. “The mosaic ... the mosaic that shows the beauty of all life? You guys solved it?”

“We _were_ it, actually. We _lived_ it, for over fifty years.” Suddenly Quentin can’t stop the flood of words. “I spent an entire lifetime with him. We were … we raised a _child_ together. And I know it didn’t technically happen to like, ‘us’ us. Margo re-wrote timeline, and we shouldn’t even have been able to remember it. That’s not even—it’s not even about that.”

Julia blinks. “It’s not?”

“Look, you’ve got to understand that you can’t possibly second guess me more than I second guessed myself. Afterward we. After the quest? I. I wanted … more. And Eliot said that we … that it wasn’t us. That we weren’t really those people in that other life.”

Quentin felt his lips twist bitterly around his next words. “Not if we’d had a choice.”

He draws in on himself, crossing his arms, unable to stand the thought of being touched.

“And I figured he was probably right. I must have just … gotten it twisted, somehow. My memories. Us. I must have built up some imaginary Eliot in my head who wanted the same things I wanted, because I’d been too selfish to face reality. “

Quentin drags his hands through is hair, then fists them, suddenly missing the extra length, needing more to grab onto. He takes a few measured breaths, feeling Julia’s eyes on him like he’s a bomb about to go off.

Eventually, he forces his fingers to unclench, unwinding his hands from his hair and then carefully folding them in his lap and continuing, “When the monster told me Eliot was dead, it—it _felt_ like a lie. It’s—you’ve seen the monster, when it’s jealous. It can’t stand not being the—the center of everything.”

Julia acknowledgement. She’s always been a better listener than he’s deserved. Somehow knowing that she’s not judging him just makes this harder to say.

“The monster was there, after my dad died. It watched me grieve. It watched me letting go of my dad, and it wanted me to let go of Eliot, so it told me Eliot was dead too. That’s how it thinks. I knew that. I _knew_ that. But I also knew how badly I wanted it to be a lie. And I thought if I wanted it to be a lie, that meant it had to be the truth.”

Quentin clears his throat painfully, realizing suddenly how hoarse his voice has gone.

“You asked me if I was sure.” He smiles bitterly. “And I get how narrow the margin for error is here. But I need you to understand that I’ve spent the entire past year doubting every single thing I felt. Every single thing I thought I remembered. I stopped trusting my own instincts. I stopped trusting my own is _sanity_ . And it’s in spite of all of that uncertainty, that I’m saying this. Eliot’s alive in there. I just. I _know_ it, Julia. I know _him_. He’s. He’s the only thing I’m sure about.”

Julia gives him a long, measuring look, followed by a short, decisive nod. “Okay.”

“I mean you’ve _met_ the monster. It’s a terrible actor.”

Julia hiccoughs out an awkward laugh. “Okay, Q. I get it. I should never have doubted you.”

Quentin gets up to get himself that much needed glass of water, then stops halfway to the sink and turns to look at Julia. He squints suspiciously. “Tell me this wasn’t all just some ploy to get me to talk about my feelings.”

Julia gives him an unnaturally neutral expression. “I have no idea what you mean.” Then she slowly raises one eyebrow. “Felt good to get it off your chest though, didn't it?”

Quentin levels an unimpressed look at her. “You’re an asshole.”

Julia grins, impishly. “Right back atcha! Now let's go save your lover boy. And drink some water; you sound like shit.” 

 

~•♡•~

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin gets some much needed sleep. Charlton serves brunch.

 

~•♦•~

 

After a mutual agreement that there’s nothing much the two of them can do about the latest monster update on their own, Julia declares her intention to call Penny and arrange an in-person meeting with Margo and Josh for the morning.

Quentin leaves her to it, collapsing into his bed with a groan, feeling more exhausted than he can ever remember feeling.

He dreams.

It’s as much a memory as it is a dream.

In that other timeline, he’d had, well, quite a lot of sex with Eliot—not that he’s really thought about it that much since the memories were planted in his brain. Not that he’s really _let_ himself think about it since—call it what it is—since the day he as good as _pled his troth_ to Eliot in the Fillorian throne room (under Margo’s fucking wedding arch, surrounded by the lingering detritus of her sham marriage—just to really grind in the irony).

He’s been pretty actively repressing it all ever since the moment Eliot ever so gently kneecapped him with that brutally tender, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

But repression doesn’t erase anything. Quentin’s had more sexual encounters with Eliot than he can actually remember, and he remembers … a lot. He’s had comfort sex with Eliot. He’s had boredom sex, argument sex, celebration sex, I-know-this-spell-but-I-never-got-a-chance-to-try-it-out-before sex—Quentin’s had pretty much every kind of sex with Eliot that can be had with another person, or with two other people for that matter. Arielle always considered Eliot Quentin’s ‘first beloved’ even after he and Eliot tried explaining that Earth didn’t have polyamorous marriages the same way Fillory did, and she’d happily welcomed Eliot into their bed, even if most of the time it was only for sleep (the cottage did get awfully cold in the winter).

The dream springs from the very clearest of all those memories—the first time he and Eliot had come together for something more than mere sex. The very first time they’d, well, made love. For all that Quentin’s questioned Eliot’s feelings on the matter, he can’t bring himself to call it less than what it was.

The dream starts out just like the memory. Their son is off on the Fillorian version of a school field trip, visiting the talking forest. Eliot finds an unopened bottle of plum wine hidden at the back of a cupboard and pours them each one glass in the early afternoon, promising they’ll finish the pattern tomorrow.

One glass in, he’s already feeling tipsy—they’ve both lost the habit of drinking regularly. They’re lying on the tiles staring up at the mostly clear sky as the sun starts to set. Quentin starts complaining about his back. Eliot groans up into a sitting position and grabs Quentin by the hand to drag him to his feet. “Come on,” he says. “Inside.”

Eliot playfully bumps shoulders along the short walk to the door, then leans in to lay a sloppy kiss on Quentin’s cheek.

Quentin laughs and grabs his head back when he pulls away, planting a second on his mouth, and then they’re kissing frantically, the mood gone from light and teasing to ravenous like a switch flipping.

Eliot barely waits till they get the door shut behind them before he starts in on Quentin’s trousers, hands moving with intent, long fingers curling proprietarily around Quentin’s dick. “Bed,” he says, half announcement, half command.

Quentin leans up on tip-toe to laugh into Eliot’s mouth, sliding his hands up under Eliot’s shirt, dragging his thumbs teasingly over Eliot’s nipples. “I love it when you go all monosyllabic on me.”

Eliot uncurls his fingers from Quentin’s dick to grab his ass, pulling him in against his hips. “Be-e-ed,” he says again, plaintive this time, dragged out into at least three syllables.”

He dips his head down to mouth at the tendon right behind Quentin’s jaw. He presses in with his teeth for one sharp, bright moment and Quentin feels it spark through him like electrical current. “Yes, yes, bed. Fabulous idea. Get your clothes off.”

“I was getting your clothes off.”

“You were taking too long,” Quentin says. He trips Eliot backwards onto the bed and starts running through poppers for a modified clothes mending spell. Eliot grabs his hands to stop him. “Don’t unravel my pants. I like these pants. Worry about your own clothes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, take your fucking top off. Show me your tits.”

Quentin laughs. He untangles their hands to comply, nudging Eliot with his foot until Eliot strips out of his shirt too. Eliot seizes Quentin’s wrists the moment he’s bare and yanks Quentin down into a straddle on top of him.

“I want to come all over you,” Quentin blurts, and he can feel his face turn a hot, painful red. “And I, um. I want your fingers in me when I do it.”

“Bold. Specific.” Eliot tilts up to brush their lips together. “Tell me again, but say it louder.”

Quentin ducks his head down. He kind of wants to cover his face in embarrassment, but Eliot won’t let go of his wrists, pressing his thumbs into the tendons above his palms just hard enough to go right to Quentin’s dick.

“Come on, Q, we never get to make any noise.” Eliot’s eyes are sparkling. “The kid isn’t here,” he says, in a sing-song, “to overhear.” He lets go of Quentin’s wrists to stroke down under the lip of Quentin’s underwear, long fingers sliding down and back, teasing over his perineum. “Make some noise for me.”

The groan that leaves Quentin’s mouth when Eliot rolls his knuckles up against the seam of his ass is pretty much entirely involuntary. He grabs Eliot by the shoulders, locking his own elbows, half trying to shove Eliot back, half trying to keep himself from collapsing forward. “Are you—are you fucking … what popper is that?”

“Sex magic 101 Q. Don’t tell me I read a book you didn’t.”

“You’re conjuring. You’re. Oo..ooh fuck.” Eliot’s suddenly slick fingers are shoving up into him with an easy confidence. “What the fuck have we been wasting cooking oil for if you knew how to do that?”

Eliot’s face does this weird little spasm it does sometimes, when he’s so pleased his brain shorts out a little. He tucks his face into the crook of Quentin’s shoulder and laughs. “Micromanage the kitchen staples later, Q; you’re supposed to be forgetting how words work.”

He sinks his teeth into Quentin’s pectoral, hard enough to make him gasp, then Eliot’s free hand slides up over Quentin’s chest and around the back of Quentin’s neck, dragging him down into a biting kiss. He’s grinning like a shark every time his fingers work another soft, breathy, “Oh,” from Quentin’s lips. Their dicks are sliding together between them. It’s not enough friction. Everything feels a just little too slippery.

Quentin reaches down to grab both their dicks, and it’s Eliot’s turn to make noise. Quentin loves this, he just fucking—he fucking loves this, the feel of Eliot leaking in his hands, the slide of foreskin, the smell, the heat of it, the sensation of those ridiculously long fingers, the way Eliot’s throat moves when he moans, the way he makes Quentin just, _happy_ , like, absurdly, blindingly happy to be, just, with him on their bed in this cottage in Fillory.

He takes Eliot’s mouth in a soft, searching kiss, feeling half choked-up all of a sudden, emotion too big for his body. He breaks the kiss to gasp, “I’m so. I’m so … lucky. How did I get so lucky? How—?”

Eliot finds his mouth again, softer this time, sweeter. Eliot’s fingers don’t stop moving in him, just giving him exactly what he asked for. Because Eliot likes it when he’s bold, and specific. “I’m close,” Quentin gasps. “Are you?” Quentin tightens his grip on the both of them and stills his hand, not ready to fall over the precipice just yet. “Are you?”

Eliot nods, rolling his hips into Quentin’s grip, breathing fast and heavy against Quentin’s mouth.

Quentin starts stroking again, simultaneously lifting his other palm to cup Eliot’s face and just look at him for a moment.

“Mmmm, yes.”

The hand at the back of Quentin’s neck slides around to the front of Quentin’s throat and rests there, heavy—too heavy—against Quentin’s windpipe. The fingers of his other hand twist punishingly in Quentin’s ass, pleasure edging over into pain.

An unnatural gold flickers behind Eliot’s irises. Quentin tries to flinch away. Fingers tighten further around Quentin’s throat and Quentin feels his vision go dark at the periphery. He can’t move, can’t scream, body gone rictus still, braced under the unstoppable, horrifying rush of his orgasm.

The monster’s voice follows in a purr.

“Oh, Quentin, I think I like this game.”

#### ~•♣•~

 

Quentin wakes on a sob.

The sun’s not up yet, but it goes without saying there’s no returning to sleep after … whatever the hell that was. He’d been too tired to change the night before, but now he’s regretting sleeping in clothes that still stink of Eliot’s alcohol tinged sweat. There’s congealed semen in his underwear.

Of course there is.

Quentin heads to the kitchen and makes coffee, feeling like he’s been run over by a truck, backed up on, and run over again. He’d be chainsmoking if he weren’t paranoid the monster could pop in at any given moment and use Quentin’s own self-destructive coping mechanisms as justification to start fucking up Eliot’s body again.

He’s on his third cup when Julia comes into the kitchen looking suspiciously chipper. “Morning, Q. How’d you sleep?”

He gives her a glare that he hopes conveys the full force of his misery before voicing a sarcasm laden, “Oh, just great.”

Julia pulls up a seat next to him on the kitchen bar, kicking him gently in the ankle. “Penny should be here with Margo and Josh any—”

“Please,” Margo’s voice rings out from behind them, “for the love of Umber’s corpsified taint, tell me you called me here because you figured out how to kill that monster freak.”

Quentin spins around on his seat too quickly, only barely managing not to spill coffee all over himself.

Margo and Josh are in the living area. Josh is standing as unobtrusively as possible, sending occasional nervous glances Margo’s way. Penny’s already popped over to the kitchen bar, holding a cup of coffee, too-casually leaning on the counter next to Julia as if he’s trying to make it seem like he ended up in whispering distance of her purely by coincidence.

Quentin stands to face Margo. Best just get this over with. “Eliot’s alive.”

Margo goes terrifyingly still.

Josh’s head snaps up. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. The silence drags for what feels like an interminably long moment, but probably only lasts four seconds.

“I’m sorry,” Josh says. “Did you just say—”

“You had better not be _fucking_ with me, Coldwater,” Margo cuts in, each word bitten off, voice ragged, hands raised, fingers curled into claws as if preparing for violence.

Quentin walks to her, not breaking eye contact as he gently takes her hands in his own. He says it again. “Eliot’s alive.”

Margo’s eyes go a bit shiny, her mouth twisted in a grimace. “You told me—”

“The monster told me that it felt Eliot die. And at the time I didn’t have a good reason not to believe it.” Quentin lets go of her hands and backs up a step. “But then Eliot broke through, somehow. Just for a minute. Long enough to tell me he’s still in there. Still fighting it.”

Penny scoffs from behind Quentin.

“And it didn’t occur to you that the monster was pretending just to fuck with you?”

Julia puts a restraining hand on Penny’s arm. “It’s not just that.”

Everyone’s eyes turn to her. She clears her throat awkwardly, before continuing. “I was there, when it happened. And after. Ever since Eliot broke through, the monster’s been acting strange, like it’s losing control of its identity. It’s hard to explain.”

“Right!” Quentin snaps his fingers. “Right, we found this page in a book describing what the gods did to take it down the first time. It used to have its own body. It’s like. It’s missing pieces of its identity. It’s not a whole person. Soul. Being. Whatever. It’s unimaginably powerful, but it’s also, like, incomplete. Eliot’s whole. It’s an incomplete piece of thing trying to exert control over a full fledged, complete person and I don’t think it’s as strong as it thinks it is.” He looks over at Julia. “As _we_ thought it is.”

Josh looks very much like he has questions to ask, but can’t decide where to start. Margo’s combative expression has relaxed marginally into a look of intense concentration. “Okay,” she says, and turns to Julia. “Describe what you mean by ‘acting strange.’”

“Drinking. Getting high. It, uh. It said ‘this body is craving a churro’ and then—” Julia pauses, glancing nervously at Quentin. She forces herself to continue. “—it started making ... advances.”

Penny goes tense beside her. “What. Kind. Of advances?”

Quentin squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. “Sexual advances.”

Penny's eyes widen in horror. He reaches a hand towards Julia. “Please tell me you don't mean—”

“She means me.” Quentin clarifies. “It wants me. It’s made … overtures. Of a personal nature. It was. It said ‘this body likes how you smell’? And then there was. It was.”

Quentin realizes suddenly that everyone is looking in incredulous horror at his hands, which unbeknownst to him have been making a number of unnecessarily … evocative gestures throughout his rambling, mostly incoherent explanation.

He self-consciously shoves his hands into his pockets. “Look, that’s not even. Nothing happened. Really. Nothing … much happened. And actually that’s, like, the _weird_ part?”

Margo blinks at him, several times in rapid succession. “ You think _that’s_ the weird part?”

“Yeah. It’s a genocidal god killing monster, and it could have done … anything to me but it. It actually listened, when I asked it to stop. It. It _cared_ whether or not I consented. That’s. That’s weird.”

“Okay here’s what I think is weird,” Josh interjects. “The knight in the castle. She did not strike me as … that is to say … she and the monster did not seem as though they were on. In. I didn’t get the impression she’d been subject to the monster’s … overtures.”

“No, right? Exactly! She told me it was like a child, with her. It just wanted attention and love. Like, affection, not like. _Love_ . Like. You get what I mean.” Quentin fidgets for a moment, then pushes on. “We think—well _I_ think—that he's … absorbing things from Eliot. Feelings. That Eliot has. For me.”

Everyone in a room takes some time to absorb that. Quentin goes to the couch to sit. Josh conjures together a cocktail, which Margo immediately snatches out of his hand and tosses back like a shot.

“Well,” Margo says, smacking her lips as she pours herself another drink. “We should have seen this coming.”

She plops down next to Quentin, just barely avoiding sloshing her newly poured beverage onto the couch arm, and claps him heartily on the thigh with her free hand.

“Any being that spends enough time inside Eliot's body is gonna discover brand new sexual urges it didn't know it had, am I right?” Margo nudges Quentin playfully in the ribs with her elbow, then throws her arm over his shoulder to yank him into a one-sided hug. “And speaking of! I think you left some stuff out of your letter, sweetie.”

Quentin blinks rapidly in confusion. “Letter?”

She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “ _The_ letter.” At Quentin’s blank expression, she continues, “The one old withered grandpa-you sent me?”

“Oh! I don’t—”

“Obviously we don’t have time for that conversation right now but it is coming, Quentin. You are not weaseling out of it.” Margo takes a breath, exhaling in a loud sigh. “Now, let’s talk about how we’re fixing this clusterfuck.”

Julia clears her throat. “I actually might have a little bit of an idea for that. Penny. You were with Marina earlier. Can she get us anymore of that god roofie? Because I think I know where to put it.”

 

#### ~•♠•~

 

Charlton tends to be a bit misleading in his explanations of how this nightmare realm works.

It’s not his fault, Eliot realizes. He’s a fundamentally different person from Eliot.

The memory with the door is the one you avoid the most, and for Charlton that’s his most terrible memory, so he told Eliot to look for a terrible memory. But Eliot’s avoidance of the memory that held his door had little to do with the awfulness of the memory itself, and everything to do with his fear of what he might have done if he let himself think about it for too long.

Eliot’s not particularly haunted by any of the terrible things that have been done to him. It’s always been the things he might do that frighten him. The responsibilities he might fail to handle. He fears his own potential to act … without grace.

That was the second of Charlton’s major miscommunications. The first was his choice to describe the room they’re currently hiding in as Eliot’s happy place. It’s really not a happy place at all. It’s a safe place. Perhaps for Charlton safety and happiness are the same thing.

But happiness and safety are not things that Eliot can easily reconcile.

Eliot remembers watching a baby take his first steps. He remembers leaning over to add another tile to the latest mosaic pattern and hearing a sudden high pitched squeal, and looking up just in time to see Quentin’s infant, still in its larval stages, totter up onto its legs, reaching in a mad grab for the curls in Eliot’s hair.

In that moment, seeing that grubby little hand reach for his hair, the stumbling of unsteady feet, the round little body ready to crash at any moment into the unforgiving surface of unfinished mosaic—in that moment, he’d fallen in love. ‘Quentin and Arielle’s baby’ became ‘ours’ in his mind—became Theodore.

Eliot hadn’t known, until then, what real happiness felt like.

Happiness is terrifying.

That moment was only the first of many—an entire lifetime of terrifyingly happy moments -- joy so loud it shook the foundations of his reality. And how absurd, that sharing a simple little cottage in a simple little wood eating simple little fruit with Quentin could inspire such overwhelmingly contradictory emotions.

Since he returned through his door, the floodgates have opened. He can’t stop thinking about Theodore, or Quentin, or the mosaic, or any of it. He’s starting to realize that the beast won’t need to destroy his happy place after all. He’s going to destroy it all by himself.

Because he can no longer pretend to himself that safety is preferable to happiness.

He can already feel it crumbling.

A few days prior, for whatever counts as days in this place, Eliot accidentally summoned the memory of his son into the common room of the physical cottage. Specifically, it was Theo as an awkward twelve year old, before he started insisting that he was too old for that particular nickname, and Ted suited him better. Eliot didn’t realize he’d summoned him until he glanced over and saw him poking around in a liquor cabinet, sniffing at one of the more potent psychedelics.

He’d forgotten, for a split second, that none of it was real—that he was trapped at the back of his own mind while a monster possessed his body. He’d forgotten everything besides the fear that his and Quentin’s only child, their idiot son, was about to poison himself on the physical kids’ stash of illicit of psychedelics.

The sudden stab of paternal terror rent a crack in floor of his safe place, all the way from the couch to the staircase.

Eliot had forcibly dismissed the memory as quickly as possible, but the damage remains. The safe place isn’t quite so safe anymore. The knocking of the beasts comes louder and louder.

Eliot has tried moving some furniture over the crack to cover it, but every time he does that the crack moves. It’s in the upstairs bathroom now -- reasonably avoidable.

Charlton’s been in a bit of a huff over it. Eliot’s been trying to ease the tension by playing the host, like he used to do at cottage parties. Of course, he was drunk for most of those, and drinking imaginary alcohol doesn’t work quite as well when you know it’s imaginary. But his mocktails are a fucking delight even if he does say so himself.

Lately Charlton keeps asking him to imagine them some food to eat so they have something to do besides pointedly not talk to each other. Eliot’s a terrible cook though, even in his own mind, and Charlton lacks the proper appreciation for the understated delicacy that is a dill and cucumber sandwich.

It’s taxing, for Charlton to summon anything himself, given his metaphysical injuries. He tries anyway, whether out of boredom or frustration, and his wound seeps from the effort.

He rolls his eyes at Eliot’s tense, concerned expression. “Stop worrying over everything. It’s only a bowl of fruit.”

Yes, how seemingly innocuous.

Eliot's frown deepens. Charlton grabs a piece at random from the bowl and chucks it at Eliot’s face, hoping to shake Eliot out of his grim mood. Eliot catches it without thinking, then looks down at what he’s caught and…

Oh.

Oh, of course it is.

“Do I dare to eat a peach?” he murmurs.

The walls begin to tremble.

 

~•♥•~

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, okay so for that last line I realize “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a long-assed poem, and that it’s highly doubtful Eliot’s actually read the whole thing, let alone remembered it well enough to quote it. But the poem was written by a gay man named Eliot so let’s all just, like, suspend our disbelief for the sake of the allusion.


End file.
